Friday, May 29, 2009

Some Thoughts in Μy Head

1. As of this past Tuesday, I am now a College Graduate. Four years in College and a lifetime in school are finally over. It's quite a strange feeling, I'm still not grasping the situation of "I'm done." The outside world, "Real Life" is a strange, strange place that I don't wanna dip my toes into just yet. To answer any immediate questions: Major was Psychology, final GPA was 3.24, not going to Grad School, don't know what kind of "real" job I'm going to do now. Anyone hiring a snarky pop culture blogger/ten-word summarizer? I think Jimmy Fallon needs some humor. Then again, late-night shows in general that don't have "Jon Stewart" or "Colbert" in their names tend to employ writers of the burnt-out variety. I keep watching these shows and I keep thinking "I could write better crap than that!"

When I came home that Tuesday night, look what I found laying on my table:



Hmm...a large, present-shaped box. I wonder what's inside...



OMG a Lappy to call my own! In the 4 days I've had it, I loaded up AIM and Firefox and now Lappy seems to have replaced my old Compy desktop. Seriously, that thing is OLD. As in, it had Windows ME when I got it (to y'all that aren't familiar with that one, it makes Vista look like XP, or to the laypeople, instead of freezing or locking up that it did now, any wrong move got me the Blue Screen of Death™). As such, it's a good 50x faster, especially here on Blogger. No more waiting forever to post entries here!

2. Speaking of In 10 Words, my other blog, I spent the last 2 weeks summarizing all 10 movies produced by Pixar, ending with today's entry, Up after seeing it earlier today. My longer-than-10-word summary: It's great, and if you have the chance to, see it in 3D. Sure, some of the colors may be a bit lost, but that factor is minor at best. The breathtaking visuals are made even more awesome by the 3D, especially during any scene in the air (which, for a movie called Up, is about 85% of the movie). The first 15 minutes set up Carl's (Ed Asner) relationship with his late wife Ellie, incredibly sweet and touching and gives ample motivation for Carl to initiate his adventure. There was plenty more heartwarming moments in the movie (many calling back to the initial sequence), along with genuine humor (a lesser movie would've had a field day giving unnecessary bathroom humor from Russel and Dug, but thankfully doesn't happen!), action, charm and heart. Yeah, it's VERY rare these days to use the words "charm" and "heart" to unironically describe an animated movie. Sure, it's not as balls to the wall action and OMG TEH AWESOMENESS like past Pixar flicks like The Incredibles, but it's not trying to be. The pacing just seemed...right. It didn't need 2 hours to tell the story, no real complex twists or annoying characters at all, and it all seemed (gasp) realistic while being immersed in the fantastic.

A friend of my buddy Steve had told him that Up seemed the most outlandish of all of Pixar's movies. A story of an old Widower and plucky Wilderness Explorer lift a house off the ground by balloons to travel to South America to meet a giant Bird and dogs that can talk via special collars is less believable than toys that talk and move when we're not around (three times!), talking ants and bugs that are circus folk battling grasshoppers, Monsters that live in a world powered by the screams and laughter of children, superheroes living in a PG Watchmen world, talking fish swimming the ocean and surviving sharks, bombs, whales and sewer drains, a talking rat that can cook and can control a human by tugging his hair, sentient cars that live in a world populated by other sentient cars, and a robot living in a post-apocalyptic Earth ravaged by pollution & consumerism that travels into space to find a colony of extremely fat humans. Riiiiiiiiiiiiight. If anything, the only plot points that I had thoughts about was Russel's backstory with his parents, and why exactly caused Muntz to put translation collars on his dogs (Speaking of dogs, if you thought Dug was funny, Alpha's voice was the subject of lots of genuine laughs). And these thoughts occurred to me AFTER I left the theater!

For those of you looking for the obligatory Pixar shoutouts: John Ratzenberger appears about 15 minutes into the movie as the Foreman who talks to Carl about moving out of his house. The Pizza Planet Truck is tricky to spot, it can be seen in a tiny form on the ground getting out of a space in a city during the sequence where Russel is dangling from the House via a blanket rope.

3. And then there were the trailers before the flick. Of course, they continued the tradition of showing the teaser to next year's movie, with 2010's finally being Toy Story 3! Sure, it's another sequel...but to Toy Story! But it's a second sequel...but it's following Toy Story 2! Whether that last part elicits a "!" or a "..." will be known on 6/18/10.

Aside from other crap, there was the trailer for G-Force. If you're thinking that it referred to the version known as Battle of The Planets, be prepared to be very, very, very disappointed.



It honestly looks more like a live-action "Chip n Dale's Rescue Rangers" movie, which isn't a bad idea in itself, but by the looks of things, I don't have any high hopes for this. They have a Chip (the Guinea Pig played by Nicholas Cage), a Dale (the one voiced by Tracy Morgan), a Gadget (the Penelope Cruz one, managing to give off some fanservice for the furries out there), a Monterey Jack (the Mole played by Steve Buscemi), even a Zipper (the fly)! And there an special organization that's trying to stop a mad scientist to destroy the world...Yeah, that's Rescue Rangers.

4. Girafarig would've been an unstoppable Pokemon had it been a member of the original 151. It was a Normal/Psychic type, which meant it was immune to Ghost attacks, one of only 2 types it was weak against back then, and Ghost and Bug attack were few as well as being notable for sucking hard. Then there was the absolute broken-ness of Psychic types in the first Generation, it would've been annoying to fight against.

5. People have been asking me "Galileo, what's your next epic?" after I finally completed my "50 Greatest Animated Villains of All Time" countdown back in October. For one thing, I'm already in the middle of writing more entries in my "Soundtracks for Summer" series, but I know you mean if I'm going to write another massive countdown. Well, you'd be right, I'm officially announcing that I've got another countdown in the making: The 50 Greatest Animated Theme Songs. It's a list that's been done a few times, but usually it's in the vein of "Best Theme Songs in all Genres," "Best Anime Themes," "Best [Insert Decade Here] Theme Songs," and the like. 50 is a good, clean, even number, and I can rattle off quite few right now. But in the interest of space an possible spoilerage, I wont. If you have any suggestions for either list, pop me either a comment here or an email at beamingforbunnies@gmail.com


That's some of the stuff that's been going through my head right now that I needed to type down.





6. Oh, by the way, Billy Mays won the "March Madness Infomercial Pitchman" tournament. It's a shame that such an epic match couldn't be blogged. It all came down to him and William Shatner for the Title. Lots of beard were thrown, plenty of slogans were yelled, and words were overacted before Shatner was finally imprisoned on Ceti Alpha V along with the corpse of Ricardo Montalban by Billy. Here's how he celebrated:

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Simpsons Scene It: Possibility?

You've heard of Scene It?, right?



That kickass trivia game that you play via DVDs and stuff? And much like its predecessor, Trivial Pursuit, there are about a good 5,000 different themes for it, like TV, Movies, Disney, Star Wars, Star Trek, Nickelodeon, Harry Potter, Seinfeld, Friends, Dr. Who, James Bond, Marvel, WB, Sports, SNL, etc. The one common thing that ties them all together? Eventually, we all get bored of using the game board and the pie pieces and just start asking each other questions, category colors be damned.

But with all of these different versions, there's one TV show that has yet to receive the Scene It? Love: The Simpsons.

Yeah, you heard me. I bet you're just as shocked as I am. But why no Simpsons edition? I mean, in its 20+ year history, the cartoon's been adapted into just about every game in existence:

-Monopoly (Normal & Treehouse of Horror versions)
-Clue
-The Game of Life
-Wheel of Fortune
-Jeopardy
-Uno (Normal & THoH)
-Operation
-Scrabble
-20Q
-Sorry!
-Triazzle (whatever the hell that is)

It seems the only other board games it HASN'T been adapted into are Candyland, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Battleship, and Guess Who? And the thing about all of those is: ALL FOUR OF THOSE GAMES ARE PERFECTLY PLAUSIBLE.

Hungry Hungry Hippos? Self-explanatory: The hippos become Homer heads, and the marbles are all pink to represent donuts.

Candyland? Homer's "The Land of Chocolate" daydream from "Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk" could work quite well here.

Guess Who? Simple: Every talking head is now a Simpsons character. (GET ON THIS ONE RIGHT NOW, FOX!!)

Battleship? Now this one can be fun. The ships are now the following: Capt. McCallister's (aka The Sea Captain) Ship, Mr. Burns's Gone Fission II, the nuclear sub that Homer & crew piloted in "Simpson Tide," The raft that Homer, Bart, Todd and Flanders drifted on in "Boy Scoutz in Da Hood," the ship used by the Navy to blow up MAD Magazine, and for good measure, include the S.S. Antarctica.

But why has it taken this long before someone asked why there's no Simpsons version of Scene It? I only have one theory: Everything other show & movie franchise that's already been adapted are finite, they've all concluded in one manner or another. The Simpsons, however, are three episodes away from ending their 20th season, with at least 2 more on its way. Its fate would match the ones of the other Simpsons trivia games/calendars that would come before it: It would be obsolete as soon as it would be released. Sure, we'd have our game, but then the NEXT season would air and then we'd be left with one season's worth of trivia missing outside of the family huddled around the warmth of the DVR.

But just for kicks and giggles, lemme check Amazon one more time to show that it's everyone else that's going nuts:

(click)

(Release Date: August 1, 2009. For realz, yo.)

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Where Did I Go?

That's a good question, Me. Seems like the last entry was on April 10th, and a rerun at that. I can explain:



Okay, so I won't go as far as blaming Swine Flu, but there's really no excuse to why I've been neglecting this blog. It's mostly the fact that my time has been consumed by end-of-the-semester schoolwork. College work pretty much sucks, but the good news is that I've got about two weeks to go before I am done with it forever! I'm accomplishing the rarity of actually graduating from college in 4 years. I don't know how I did it, either.

There's also the issue of completing the March Madness series, which only had 2 more entries to go. Despite it being May and the real March Madness being over for a long time, I promise to get the next part up asap. It just seemed that I stopped being motivated from writing it due to a snag in my original vision for it: I designed it for fan participation, but it's not fun when no one enters. Is there some kind of reverse psychology that works with blogs? Every single blog I've read that asks questions or raise topics for reader comments, THEY GET THEM. Not so much with me. It seems that whenever I ask for readers for ideas, comments, or help on entries, it just manages to drive you away.

It's just words on a website, you're not deciding the fate of the planet if you want William Shatner to beat Dennis Haysbert. I'm not Matt, I can't just leave for a month and have a legion of fans run the site without me, posting whenever I'm going to finish X entry. (And believe me, I've got plenty of X entries that are currently orphaned)

But for those of you who know me are aware that I haven't been 100% neglectful to blogging. I still update In 10 Words every weekday. Maybe it's the fact that writing 10 words a day can leave me unmotivated to write anything longer than a paragraph these days. But I assure you all that all that's going to change.

I'll start by updating you of what I've been up to since I last posted:

-Got into a bad car accident. Roughly the same week as I posted the previous entry, I got into a rear-ender. You know that cop car that blocks the left lane on a highway to block the construction that follows it? Yeah, I rear-ended that. Complete miracle that I was fine, and the cop car was unharmed. It's my car that got the worst of it, and is STILL in the shop as of this writing. I just have a rental that's actually a newer model (a black 2007 Toyota Carolla as opposed to my silver 2003 one) until then.

-Joined the iPod culture! Sure, I only got a shuffle, but it's still an iPod. Kinda. I won it from Dave & Buster's for the mere price of 15,000 tickets, yay me. 3/4 full, it has all 12 of Weird Al Yankovic's Albums, 2 Ramones best-of CDs, Saturday Morning Cartoon's Greatest Hits (a CD of classic cartoon theme songs covered by 90s rock groups) and the Beastie Boys. Not an unusual combination if you read this blog as often as I do.

-Made a friend with a Japanese blogger. He blogs at Tokyo 5 on Wordpress, and found In 10 Words a few weeks ago. And, of course, when I think Japan, I think of this:






Turns out I'm mostly right. The last picture was an actual picture on his blog. Sadly, he's only an American transplant who started a family and blog in Japan, and is into KISS. Close enough for me.

So that's about it for me. Yeah, I'm fully aware that my life isn't as glamorous as this blog makes it out to be. I try to give something extra about this place as compensation.